ing to forget that I wasn't only
a nursery-maid, and it's been a good thing for him to be reminded...
but the great thing is that with what I've earned he and I can go off
to southern Italy and Sicily for three months. You know I know how
to manage... and, alone with me, Nat will settle down to work: to
observing, feeling, soaking things in. It's the only way. Mrs. Melrose
wants to take him, to pay all the expenses again-well she shan't. I'll
pay them." Her worn cheek flushed with triumph. "And you'll see what
wonders will come of it.... Only there's the problem of the children.
Junie quite agrees that we can't take them...."

Thereupon she had unfolded her idea. If Susy was at a loose end, and
hard up, why shouldn't she take charge of the children while their
parents were in Italy? For three months at most-Grace could promise it
shouldn't be longer. They couldn't pay her much, of course, but at least
she would be lodged and fed. "And, you know, it will end by interesting
you--I'm sure it will," the mother concluded, her irrepressible
hopefulness rising even to this height, while Susy stood before her with
a hesitating smile.

Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her. If
there had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and youngest of the
band, she might have felt less hesitation. But there was Nat, the second
in age, whose motor-horn had driven her and Nick out to the hill-side
on their fatal day at the Fulmers' and there were the twins, Jack and
Peggy, of whom she had kept memories almost equally disquieting. To rule
this uproarious tribe would be a sterner business than trying to beguile
Clarissa Vanderlyn's ladylike leisure; and she would have refused on the
spot, as she had refused once before, if the only possible alternatives
had not come to seem so much less bearable, and if Junie, called in for
advice, and standing there, small, plain and competent, had not said
in her quiet grown-up voice: "Oh, yes, I'm sure Mrs. Lansing and I can
manage while you're away--especially if she reads aloud well."

Reads aloud well! The stipulation had enchanted Susy. She had never
before known children who cared to be read aloud to; she remembered with
a shiver her attempts to interest Clarissa in anything but gossip
and the fashions, and the tone in which the child had said, showing
Strefford's trinket to her father: "Because I said I'd rather have it
than a book."

And here were children who consen